Twelve essays exploring aspects of literacy and art criticism, retrospective sociology and the effects of relativism on moral behavior.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
An Intelligent View of Authenic Learning and Culture:
Jacques Barzun'S collection of essays title THE CULTURE WE DESERVE demonstrates some of the problems in modern America. Barzun diagnoses the problems of false egalitarianism the lact of respect for serious learning. He shows that institutionalizing lack of ability and the politicalization of "education" have corroded the professions and serious culture. One of the problems that Barzun realizes is that "experts" have incorrectly assumed that everyone is an artist whether it be writing, painting and... more info
A glimpse into wht education is really about:
Oh, I've had my disagreements with Jacques Barzun - some of what he has written about Darwin was as wrong-headed as anything I've ever read - but I've never viewed him as other than an exemplary teacher, an adherent to the highest and best values education has to offer. The one-star rating here by one reviewer is about the worst review I have read at Amazon. He has a right to his opinion; but with all due respect, he has also a right to be wrong and he is fully exercising this right here in his dismissal of... more info
People just don't get it:
This book deserves six stars, and mainly because of people like the one-star reviewer before me. For me, a non-reader who, it turns out, was that exactly because of all those post-modern "egalitarians" of our day who write the most boring books on earth (*thinking* they can write because they can quote other, equally boring and useless "scholars" in a million footnotes).
To me these essays by Barzun were nothing new. The tune was similar to that of "Begin Here" and "From Dawn to Decadence," which is, he... more info
Let's Go Back to the 1880's - Things Were So Much Better:
An attack on the modern intellectual world by a leading light of the conservative "fifties" - that ghastly era that lasted from about 1946 to about 1963. Barzun is upset that the lower orders are no longer deferential to their social superiors, that women and minorities don't settle for crumbs, that students question what their professors say, that universities are not reserved for a small minority of WASP spoiled brats, and that everyone doesn't agree that imperialism is a great project. This is a man who... more info
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